Technical / What data will WhatsApp get under its updated terms and privacy policy?

Zoom News : Jan 06, 2021, 02:54 PM
Technical Desk: WhatsApp on Tuesday, 5 January, updated its Terms of Services and its Privacy Policy and started sending in-app notifications to its users informing them about a change. The new terms and privacy policy will come into effect on 8 February 2021.

Users will need to accept these terms and changes in order to keep using their WhatsApp accounts after the mentioned date.

“WhatsApp is updating its terms and privacy policy,” the company said in the notification that is being sent to both Android and iOS users. The notification also mentions key updates, such as how the company processes user data, how businesses can use Facebook-hosted services to store and manage their WhatsApp chats and how the company will partner with Facebook, its parent company, to offer integrations across the Facebook company products.

Here is a breakdown of what the new WhatsApp privacy policy states, the data it collects and how it interacts with other Facebook-owned companies:

What Data Does WhatsApp Collect? And When?

One of the many changes that the company provided information on is the data it collects from users, which includes account information, address book information, status information, transactions and payments data, customer support communications and messages in some circumstances.

The two important information collection updates are the last two transactions and messages. According to the company, messages are only stored on your device and not on the company servers.

Transactions, Payments Data Collection

If you use Facebook owned payment services or any Facebook owned service meant for financial transactions, the company does collect additional data, which includes information about your payment account and transaction information.

Payment account and transaction information includes information needed to complete the transaction (for example, information about the payment method, shipping details and transaction amount).

WhatsApp Messages Data Collection

The following scenarios describe circumstances where WhatsApp will store your messages:

Undelivered Messages: If a message cannot be delivered immediately (for example, if the recipient is offline), WhatsApp will keep it in encrypted form on its servers for up to 30 days and try to deliver it. If a message is still undelivered after 30 days, the message will be deleted.

Media Forwarding: When a user forwards media within a message, WhatsApp will store that media temporarily in encrypted form on our servers to aid efficient delivery of additional forwards.

There are also ‘automatically collected information’, which includes usage and log information, device and connection data, locations and cookies.

How WhatsApp Works with Other Facebook Companies

Apart from WhatsApp, Facebook also owns Instagram, Facebook Payments, Onava, Oculus, and CrowdTangle among others. Here is the complete list of Facebook owned companies.

According to the new terms and conditions and privacy policy shared by WhatsApp, it will be able to share and receive a certain category of information with other Facebook companies, they include:

Account registration information (such as your phone number)

Transaction data, service-related information

Information on how users interact with others (including businesses) when using the platform.

Mobile device information

User IP address

It may also share and receive the automatically collected date and messages, that have been mentioned in the scenarios listed above.

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